page_title: Rugby union
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Rugby union / Global reach / Europe
caption_attribution_description: World Cup qualification Germany vs. Belgium. Sunday 29/04/2006 in Hannover/Germany
context_page_description: Rugby union, widely known simply as rugby, is a full contact team sport that originated in England in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its most common form, a game is played between two teams of 15 players using an oval-shaped ball on a rectangular field called a pitch. The field has H-shaped goalposts at both ends.
  Rugby union is a popular sport around the world, played by male and female players of all ages. In 2014, there were more than 6 million people playing worldwide, of whom 2.36 million were registered players. World Rugby, previously called the International Rugby Football Board and the International Rugby Board, has been the governing body for rugby union since 1886, and currently has 101 countries as full members and 18 associate members.
  In 1845, the first football laws were written by pupils at Rugby School; other significant events in the early development of rugby include the decision by Blackheath F.C. to leave the Football Association in 1863 and, in 1895, the acrimonious split between the then amateur rugby union and the professional rugby league.
context_section_description: The growth of rugby union in Europe outside the 6 Nations countries in terms of playing numbers has been sporadic. Historically, British and Irish home teams played the Southern Hemisphere teams of Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as well as France. The rest of Europe were left to play amongst themselves. During a period when it had been isolated by the British and Irish Unions, France, lacking international competition, became the only European team from the top tier to regularly play the other European countries; mainly Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Romania, Poland, Italy and Czechoslovakia. In 1934, instigated by the French Rugby Federation, FIRA (Fédération Internationale de Rugby Amateur) was formed to organise rugby union outside the authority of the IRFB. The founding members were Italy, Romania, Netherlands, Portugal, Czechoslovakia, and Sweden.
  Other European rugby playing nations of note include Russia, whose first officially recorded match is marked by an encounter between Dynamo Moscow and the Moscow Institute of Physical Education in 1933. Rugby union in Portugal also took hold between the First and Second World Wars, with a Portuguese National XV set up in 1922 and an official championship started in 1927.
  In 1999, FIRA agreed to place itself under the auspices of the IRB, transforming itself into a strictly European organising body. Accordingly, it changed its name to FIRA–AER (Fédération Internationale de Rugby Amateur – Association Européenne de Rugby). It adopted its current name of Rugby Europe in 2014.
caption: Germany playing Belgium in a World Cup qualifier, April 2006
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